Tamer Elgamil ·
On 16 September 2026 the Fed raised rates and the gold ounce fell. In Cairo the 21-karat gram closed 35 pounds higher the same day. Both numbers are correct.
If you followed the gold price on the evening of Wednesday 16 September 2026, you saw the ounce drop hard. If you bought a gram of 21-karat gold in a Cairo shop that same day, you paid about 35 pounds more than the day before, at 6,260 pounds. Neither of those is a mistake, and neither shop nor market got the price wrong. They are two different clocks and two different currencies. Once you see how they fit together, a headline that says gold slid on a day your own gram rose stops being confusing.
On 16 September 2026 the Federal Open Market Committee voted 12-0 to raise its target range for interest rates by a quarter of a point, to 3.75%-4.00%. It was the first American rate rise since July 2023. The committee said inflation remained elevated, and that the increase would support a timelier return to its 2% target.
The move was not a surprise. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh had spoken at the Jackson Hole symposium on 28 August. Markets read him as hawkish enough that the 10-year Treasury yield rose about a quarter of a point in the weeks that followed. The projections published alongside the decision showed that of the 18 officials who submitted one, 16 expected at least one more rise before the end of the year. Four expected two. Those are their projections, not ours, and they are about interest rates, not about gold.
Gold pays you nothing while you hold it. No interest, no dividend, no rent. So when the return on simply holding dollars goes up, gold has to compete harder for the same money, and in dollar terms it usually gives up ground.
That is broadly what happened. The ounce had touched about $4,700 in late August. It drifted down to roughly $4,370 to $4,400 in the days before the meeting, then fell to around $4,240 once the decision landed. By 17 September it had clawed back most of that, trading near $4,310.
Here is the part the coverage leaves out. The Fed publishes its decision at 2pm in New York. That is 8pm in Cairo, after Egyptian gold shops have shut and long after the day's local prices were set.
The Cairo listing that recorded 6,210 pounds to buy and 6,260 to sell on 16 September was built against an international ounce of about $4,328. That is the level before the announcement, not after it. So a US rate decision does not reach an Egyptian shop window on the day it is made. It arrives the next working morning, folded in with everything else that moved overnight. A same-day comparison between a global headline and an Egyptian price tag is almost always comparing two different moments.
A gram of 21-karat gold in Egypt is quoted in pounds. That price is the dollar ounce, converted at whatever the pound is worth against the dollar that day. Two separate things move it, and they do not have to move the same way.
Through 2026 the pound has drifted weaker. A dollar bought somewhere between 47 and 50 pounds in the early months of the year; in mid-September it traded in a range of roughly 51.35 to 51.90. Higher American interest rates tend to draw money toward dollar assets, which tends to lift the dollar against other currencies. So the same decision that pushes the dollar price of gold down can push the pound down as well. And a cheaper pound raises the pound price of anything quoted in dollars. The two pulls work against each other, and how much of the global move survives the trip depends on which one is stronger that week.
Put the clock and the currency together and the practical result is that the Egyptian price is a muffled version of the international one rather than a copy of it.
On 13 September the 21-karat gram was quoted at about 6,280 pounds. That is roughly 440 pounds, or 7.5%, above the 5,840 pounds it started the year at. And it came over a stretch in which the dollar ounce spent most of its time well below its own January record. The gap is not a local distortion or a shop keeping something back. It is what a price looks like when it is quoted in a currency that has been losing ground against the dollar at the same time as the metal has.
Three things follow, and none of them is a prediction.
First, do not expect the Cairo price to react to a Fed decision on the same calendar day. The timing alone rules it out.
Second, do not expect it to move by the same percentage when it does react. Part of the move is the metal and part of it is the currency.
Third, if you want to know what a US decision did to your own holding, the local number is the only one that answers the question. The gold price by karat page carries today's Egyptian figure, and the exchange rate page shows the pound leg on its own. The price history page shows how the local gram has actually moved month by month, and the methodology page explains where the prices on this site come from.
Two reasons. The Fed publishes its decision at 2pm New York time, which is 8pm in Cairo, after Egyptian shops have closed and set their prices for the day, so the Cairo price on 16 September was based on an ounce of about 4,328 dollars, the level before the announcement. On top of that, the Egyptian price is quoted in pounds, so the pound's own exchange rate against the dollar is part of it.
It raised them. On 16 September 2026 the Federal Open Market Committee voted 12-0 to lift its target range by a quarter of a point to 3.75 to 4.00 percent, the first American rate rise since July 2023.
Because gold pays no interest and no dividend while you hold it. When the return available on simply holding dollars goes up, gold has to compete harder for the same money, so it tends to give up ground in dollar terms. This is a tendency, not a rule, and it says nothing about what any price will do next.
No. A rise tends to pressure the dollar price of the ounce, but it can also strengthen the dollar against the Egyptian pound, and a weaker pound raises the pound price of anything priced in dollars. The two effects pull in opposite directions and can partly or fully cancel each other out.